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Thursday, June 20, 2013

In the winter, flocks of juncos visit our bird feeders and sit in our trees and shrubs. This painting was an effort to capture them using acrylic and a palette knife. I put in the central rectangle of color to give them some context, albeit an abstract one. The tails of a couple of the birds extend outward into a white border, making the whole image a bit less formal.

Artist's Note: The central rectangle is approximately 4.5"x7". A white border around the whole piece increases the size of the image to 9" x 10".

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

When I started this painting, I wanted to capture the effect of bright sunshine streaming in at an angle, bleaching the color out of the plumage on the sunlit side of the geese. This was one of my earlier efforts with a palette knife. I was really pleased with the textures I was able to get, especially the tail feathers on the front goose.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

In this painting, I wanted to play with the wonderful range of blues exhibited by a snowy landscape on a cold, winter day. Shadows, especially, create a world of variety because of the way they follow the curves and contours of the snow, light blue in some places, much darker in others.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

I love painting moonlit winter landscapes. The moonlight shines on the crusty snow creating a wonderland of competing blues and whites. It is absolutely amazing how far you can see on a moonlit night. In this painting, I combined moonlight with white birches to create a pattern of dark and light.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Lake Champlain has a wide variety of landscapes along its edges - swamps, beaches, rocks, pine forests, farm fields, and summer cottages. This painting was inspired by a new park donated to the community by a local family. Pine trees and scrub brush grow up to the edge of a white sand beach. Just the place to be on a hot, summer day.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

In the winter, Lake Champlain, and the sky above it, takes on a range of delicate colors from pale pink to lavender to cerulean blue. The mountains are every shade of purple and lavender. Meanwhile, close in, the light has faded and most of the landscape goes dark, creating a silhouette to frame the distant view.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

I am currently working on a series of new paintings for the Shelburne Museum's Art Barn (an art and crafts gallery featuring mainly Vermont artisans.) So, while I work on those pieces, I thought I would take the opportunity to clean out some older works that haven't found a home and offer them at a discount.

This painting was inspired by the amazing greenness of summer in Vermont. It's hard to imagine so much green until you see it. After a long, gray winter, it is a wonderful sight.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

This painting was inspired by the view on one of my trips south to visit my family. It was late in the day and the last rays of the sun were lighting a group of barns up on a hillside. I wanted to capture both the intensity of the light in the distance and the mystery in the selectively illuminated shapes in the landscape.

Note: The foreground in this painting is actually a deep green and the upper clouds a deep bluish-purple. Cameras can't quite get the full range of values that we painters work with. Combined with the data loss that goes with shrinking the image for the web, and some of the subtlety of the original is lost.

To purchase this painting, please go to my Daily Paintworks Gallery (icon is at right.)

About Me

I am a painter living in Vermont. I've been painting for about 20 years learning as I go along. In the last couple of years I've been learning a bunch of new painting techniques and experimenting with new subject matter.